Hyperliquid has broken ranks with the broader digital asset market, posting a massive double-digit rally while Bitcoin and other major altcoins like XRP suffer from the bear market.
According to CryptoSlate’s data, Hyperliquid’s HYPE is one of the crypto market’s top performers over the past two weeks, jumping roughly 71% to a high of $35, its highest price since last December.
This price performance reflects crypto traders’ positive sentiment about the protocol’s potential to expand product offerings.
Notably, the price action stands in sharp contrast to the ugly tape elsewhere. Over the past weeks, a sharp risk-off wave has hit corners of the market, and the damage hasn’t been isolated to digital assets.
The same macro tremors that knocked crypto lower also jolted precious metals and other risk trades, wiping around $6 trillion over the first few weeks of 2026.
And yet in the middle of that giant market-wide red screen, HYPE is acting like a different animal, with US investors driving its uptrend.
The simplest explanation that capital is just rotating into a strong chart misses what makes this move structurally interesting.
Essentially, HYPE is increasingly trading less like a generic altcoin and more like an exchange-linked asset whose demand can rise because markets get messy. In a risk-off regime, most tokens are punished for being “risk.”
However, venues that monetize volatility can see fundamentals improve when everyone else’s fundamentals degrade.
Hyperliquid’s volatility revenue
Hyperliquid’s core product is perpetual futures. When volatility spikes, perpetual volume typically rises as traders hedge, speculate, rotate across assets, and are liquidated more frequently.
That activity throws off fees, and Hyperliquid’s design links those fees back to token demand in a direct, mechanical loop.
On DefiLlama, Hyperliquid Perps shows a 30-day perp volume of $216.286 billion and a 24-hour perp volume of $11.778 billion.
This activity is accompanied by 30-day revenue of $68.42 million and annualized revenue of $834.7 million. At the same time, open interest on the platform currently exceeds $6 billion.
These numbers matter because of the “what happens next” step. DefiLlama’s methodology notes that 99% of fees go to an Assistance Fund for buying HYPE tokens, excluding builder fees.
In other words, more trading activity can translate into more buy pressure for the token, which is built into the plumbing rather than dependent on sentiment.
That is the core reason HYPE can appear to be the “sole winner” during broad drawdowns. If fear increases turnover, the protocol’s cashflow loop can strengthen even while the rest of the market deleverages.
For context, data from ASXN show that the daily HYPE buyback rate climbed to nearly $4 million earlier this month, the highest level since last November. When expanded to the past month, the rate exceeded $55 million.
Two takeaways fall out of that set of numbers.
First, buyback intensity has accelerated recently. The 30-day figure implies an average of approximately $1.86 million per day, whereas the 7-day figure implies $2.85 million per day, consistent with a market that has become more active and more volatile.
Second, the buybacks have been executed at progressively higher average prices over shorter windows ($25.81 over 30 days versus $31.36 over the past 24 hours), which fits the broader point that HYPE demand is tightening as activity rises.
Hyperliquid is widening the volatility surface area
Hyperliquid’s significant price gains also have strong product catalysts that are easy to overlook if you only track price.
The protocol is effectively widening the “volatility surface area” it can capture by moving beyond standard crypto assets into Real World Assets (RWAs) and permissionless markets, a strategy unlocked by its recent HIP-3 upgrade.
HIP-3 made Hyperliquid more permissionless on listings, allowing the protocol to support builder-deployed perpetual markets. These deployers must maintain 500,000 staked HYPE and are subject to slashing via a validator vote in the event of malicious operation.
That stake requirement serves as a direct token sink and imposes a “cost of entry” for builders seeking to rapidly list markets.
This infrastructure enabled the platform’s rapid expansion into commodities. Milk Road, a crypto commentary platform, noted that this trend deserves way more attention than it is getting.
The firm attributed HYPE’s rally to this integration of RWAs, noting that Hyperliquid has captured 2% of the world’s primary silver market despite listing the metal roughly 30 days ago.
Milk Road described this volume as “INSANE,” emphasizing that silver trading volume indicates that the HYPE token can thrive rather than merely survive the market downturn.
Data from Flowscan show that cumulative open interest across HIP-3 DEXs has exceeded $28 billion.
New competitor against Polymarket?
Meanwhile, the newest narrative tailwind is HIP-4, which introduces outcome-style, event-based markets.
Hyperliquid stated that HIP-4 will introduce fully collateralized contracts that settle within fixed ranges. These are positioned as prediction-market-like instruments and limited-risk, options-style structures designed to avoid margin calls and liquidation cascades.
According to the firm:
“Outcomes bring non-linearity, dated contracts, and an alternative form of derivative trading that does not involve leverage or liquidations. The outcome primitive expands the expressivity of HyperCore, while composing with other primitives such as portfolio margin and the HyperEVM.”
Data from Santiment indicates that the crowd appears to be hyped about Hyperliquid rolling out HIP-4. The firm noted that recent price action suggests that community expectations regarding new derivatives and prediction markets could attract additional volume.
Notably, discussions of HIP-4 have also included comparisons with existing prediction platforms.
DeFi analyst Ignas said Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 is notable because if outcomes compose with perps, a trader can long ETH and buy an ‘ETH below $2,000′ outcome as a hedge, causing their margin to drop because the positions offset each other.
According to him, competitors such as Polymarket and Kalshi cannot do this.
Additionally, he noted that Hyperliquid’s permissionless deployment could confer advantages, as the platform allows anyone to create markets, whereas upcoming rivals such as Polymarket do not support this feature.
HYPE faces an impending headwind
Despite the bullish structural arguments, HYPE faces a significant test this week.
Data from Tokenomist indicates that the next Hyperliquid unlock is scheduled for Feb. 6 and will release 9.92 million HYPE to core contributors, which is approximately $335 million at recent prices.
This is where the “mechanical bid” narrative meets real market structure. If Hyperliquid Perps generates roughly $68.42 million in 30-day revenue, the unlock’s notional value is approximately 4.9 times the monthly run rate.
That doesn’t mean the buyback loop cannot handle it. It means the path matters. If unlocked holders sell aggressively and quickly, the market can gap down even with steady buybacks, especially if broader risk appetite remains weak.
However, if selling is staggered or volatility keeps volumes elevated, buybacks can act as a stabilizer, turning “unlock fear” into a buy-the-dip setup for traders.
But if the broader market volatility collapses as the macroeconomic backdrop calms and traders step away, the buyback yield declines, and HYPE starts trading more like a standard risk asset again.
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